We launched the online version of the January/February issue of the Washington Monthly tonight. I’ve been working on it almost nonstop since December 26th, which is why I haven’t been around all that much to write about the issues of the day.
We now move into the promotional stage of things, but that requires less intensive and sustained effort on my part than transforming the print edition into an online edition. So, I should be able to write a lot more this week.
We have a lot of really good material in this issue, including our feature on man-eating polar bears.
If you’re a fan of Jon Krakauer’s writing, you’ll enjoy the style of the article. Personally, I have a thing for stories about people who have enough disposable income and vacation time to visit the most forbidding places on Earth and then run into some serious problems. Whether that’s an avalanche on Mount Everest or a hungry polar bear in remote Labrador, I just eat the stuff up.
Of course as usual, I found a nit to earn my reading of this issue. On page 2 of Heather Hurlburt’s piece on Grand Strategy, in the first line, there is typo hash that probably should be passe (with the proper accent) instead of the A-bar and copyright symbol.
Paul Glastris’s overview of the current progressive situation speaks to the loss of the people who can bridge the institutional insider and movemental outsider roles so that outside political action can be reflected inside institutions. Those people in the previous progressive era interpreted the realities of the inside to the people outside and more importantly the outside to the inside. Institutions today are so dismissive or outside information and so intent on bullying through their own institutional agendas that “shut it down” has become the only semi-practical means of gaining their attention if not a hearing.
Vann Jones was probably the last prominent example of this sort of interpreter, and he now has been reduced in function to attempting to co-opt the outside into some form of support for the inside. The truth is that the communication flow needs desperately to go the other way.
Kent Greenfield’s two pieces on corporate personhood point to the fact that the problem is “personhood” without a person (or when that person is solely the CEO). The CEO gets a shield for manipulative practices that manufacture consensus of institutions with large resources. There is no accountability without laboriously breaking the fiction on a case-by-case basis that the personhood was a fraudulent front for one human. Indeed new forms of incorporation can shield only one human being. Instead of persons with rights, corporations are grants by governments of sets of privileges limited to those grants by charter. The problem we face now is that states have allowed too broad and vague a grant of privileges so that the corporation can assert the rights of human beings.
The conflation of money and speech is another huge problem that was better solved by not granting corporations the privilege of participating in politics corporately. And certainly not participating in the financing of politics anonymously. The money-speech issue is indeed separate from the personhood issue.
The biggest issue with corporate personhood is stating what exactly its social benefit that justifies its existence is supposed to be. All defenders fail to make that argument first. It should be made because it will identify more precisely the privileges that states need to extend in charters and what is either corrupting, criminal, or dangerous to democracy.
Heather Hurlburt’s collective book review on grand strategy points to the fact that our national security institutions and purposes are in need to a grand rethinking and that even those most aware within the military understand this even if they seek to preserve the military’s dominance in American society.
Continuing down the current path becomes more dangerous every day as the politician seek to out-grandstand each other. Increasing the biggest danger to the security of the US people is Congress’s rashness.
It’s time to give up that illusion of Manifest Destiny and start living in the multipolar world of international power that currently exists. The big geopolitical debate is finally as always: Who controls the global commons and for what purposes? Who enforces international law and how even-handedly? Who watches the watchmen and how diligently?
If the United States had the left wing it properly deserves, the views of the Washington Monthly would be in the proper center just as New Deal liberal views were at the center of the post-WWII era, including a liberal imperialism that has brought us so much grief over the past 69 years.
One of the items on the agenda of that proper center better be the allowing the restoration and legitimization of that proper left wing. Otherwise that center becomes marginalized as the left of the acceptable discourse inside the Beltway instead of the compass point for consensus policy. Our very dangerous position right now is that John Boehner is the compass point for consensus policy. Or is it Mitch McConnell.
Thanks for catching the accent mark that I missed.
I always value your first-run reactions to the magazine and pass them along.
Thanks, Tarheel.
Thanks for your kind comment. My position is that it is going to take a complicated ecosystem of left political activists, some in institutions and a lot active in the field to move this country in a progressive direction. The Washington Monthly seems the best to serve as the conservative (in the non-ideological sense of preserving what works) end of that conversation on the left. The trend between the last issue and this one is IMO the proper one for them to successfully play that role. The danger is that of all conservative (in the sense above) pivots, that of co-option by a non-functioning status quo. There are all too few with this perspective who have not descended in trying to “fend off the barbarians at the gates”.
A big unmentioned issue relative to the status quo is the monumental corruption of all of the institutions of American society in which personal gain subverts legitimate institutional mission.
Will get to some of the meatier articles later, but my eye caught the entry about Three Ways to Reform the NFL, and it was interesting.
Two of the ways hadn’t occurred to me. One is having linemen adopt a regular two-point, not 3-point, stance, on all plays, not just for some on passing plays. This avoids much of the head-down helmet-to-helmet contact on each play occurring in the trenches and largely unnoticed by the fan. Much of this contact results in the kind of repeated sub-concussive injury which soon results in terms of brain damage to a full concussion.
The other is to make all player contracts guaranteed. Currently most players can be cut for any reason at any time, including for being injured, producing a negative incentive for players to play hurt and for team coaches and trainers to not adequately address serious injuries in favor of quick fixes. It also produces an immoral system of coaches and owners treating players like commodities to be used up and then discarded when no longer useful.
The third suggestion, padding on the outside of helmets, was one I’ve always thought from a common sense perspective would work. Apparently some solid research data confirms this, but the league has its exclusive helmet deal with Riddell, and that co doesn’t make them. Players should be free to choose their protective headgear with the league stressing safety above aesthetics.
Meanwhile, I look forward next week to the Packers whupping the Cowgirls at Lambeau, the first playoff visit by the Girls since their glorious defeat nearly 50 years ago in the famous Ice Bowl.
great article
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